Vinitaly Diary. How do you make a good Chianti? Act II

“A good Chianti is the product of a territory and of a wine culture”, says Antonio Nardi-Dei da Filicaja, although, as he states, there are many Chianti: his is a meditation one, where the tuscan grumpiness is softened by the usage of mature grape, a wine that comes with conviviality, but with a special one, not for all days.

Even for Veronica Passerin Entreves from the Fattoria Dianella a good Chianti is the product of the soil, without corrections. His wine, however, is a wine to be drunken in the year, vinified in steel and not in wood, fresh, a wine you can pair with fish too: a little pleasure for all the occasions, as evidenced by the design of their mignon size bottle.

Also the Chianti of Le Sorgenti Farm is cool and drinkable; it can be a table as well as a wine-bar wine, because as Elisabetta Ferrari says “people should learn to pay attention to their own taste and not to what market or fashion decides for them”. “To be what we are” in short; it is what is said to me even by those of the Podere Tognetti, a family that has been producing Chianti for eight generations: their wine is done with sangiovese, without many interventions.

An every day wine is also the one of the Treggiaia Farm, a Chianti you drink alone, not frenchified, that reflects the area in which it is produced: the Valdarno. The Chianti of the Tenuta Moriano of Montespertoli is easy to drink too, but it is also built using a blend with cabernet and merlot. There are several ways to make a ready to drink Chianti, what is certain is that conviviality is essential (and in Montespertoli, where is held the Wine Festival, they know it for real).

Where there is good wine, there are good men, says Riccardo Tamburini of the Isola Verde; hence, for Aristotelian syllogism and if it is true what the others have told me, a good land produces good men (something similar had been written by Montesquieu in “The Spirit of Laws”).

Territory is the essential point for Irene Sanesi of the Valacchi Farm as well; more precisely in her opinion a good Chianti is the product of the terroir(with this french aura coming out even in the blend her wines!), that is the combination of soil, vines, climate and human labor.

The proximity of the sea strongly affects the area and, consequently, the wine that there is produced. This is what Sergio Gargari by the Pieve de ‘Pitti – located in Terricciola in the province of Pisa – says to me: he produces a Chianti that echoes the feelings brought by sea and by the presence of fossils. The presence of the sea and of the Arno river returns in the wines of Fattoria Bini too, which is located between Empoli and Vinci: this influence makes their Chianti fresh and fruity, as a result of a natural mitigation and of a merlot blend enhancing this openness.